Configure Broadcast Slide Show performance (Office Web Apps)

Office Web Apps

Applies to: PowerPoint Web App Preview

Topic Last Modified: 2011-08-05

The information that is provided in this article about how to configure Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 Broadcast Slide Show performance is intended for IT pros who maintain Microsoft Office Web Apps installed on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products on a stand-alone server or on a server farm on-premises in their organization. SharePoint 2010 Products in this article refers to Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 unless otherwise noted.

Important

Performance and capacity guidance provided in this article is preliminary and subject to change. Your results may vary.

When using Microsoft PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show, the Broadcast Slide Show attendee's browser will poll the Broadcast Slide Show server once per second to check for updates in the slide show presentation. If there are many attendees, this can cause an excessive load on the Web front-end servers, and in extreme cases can disrupt other services on the server farm. By default, Broadcast Slide Show is optimized to support broadcasts of fewer than 50 attendees; however, additional attendees are not prevented from joining the presentation. In cases in which a Broadcast Slide Show presentation may have more attendees, administrators can optimize Broadcast Slide Show performance by using one or more of the methods described in this article.

To increase the rate at which the PowerPoint service processes broadcast requests, administrators can add the behaviorConfiguration="MaxPendingRecieves" setting for endpoint elements for the BroadcastStateService service and add the MaxPendingReceives behavior to the endpointBehaviors element in the Web.config file on middle-tier servers.

Important

Adding this setting will increase the number of attendees who can attend broadcasts. However, this may increase resources that are used by middle-tier servers. This setting is recommended only for a dedicated broadcast server farm, or for a server farm where significant broadcast usage is expected.

Adding this setting may require modifying multiple Web.config files on each farm server. For more information about how to work with Web.config files, see Working with Web.config Files at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms460914(office.14).aspx.

The following example increases broadcast service capacity by adding the behaviorConfiguration="MaxPendingRecieves" setting and adding the MaxPendingReceives behavior to the endpointBehaviors element in the Web.config file:

In organizations that will use PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show for many attendees on a regular basis, but cannot deploy a dedicated SharePoint server farm for PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show, administrators can change the polling interval value, which determines how frequently attendees poll the Broadcast Slide Show server to check for updates in the presentation. Increasing the polling interval value will decrease polling traffic, but will increase time elapsed before attendees see changes in presentation. The polling interval can be specified in milliseconds (1000 milliseconds = 1 second) by using Windows PowerShell.

Administrators can modify the maxConcurrentCalls setting for the serviceThrottling element for ViewServiceTypeBehaviors and ViewServiceTypeBehaviorsHttps behaviors in the PowerPoint viewing Web.config file. This setting limits Web front-end resources that are used for views by the PowerPoint Web App and PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show. Modifying this setting requires modifying the Web.config files on each front-end farm server. For more information about how to work with Web.config files, see Working with Web.config Files at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms460914(office.14).aspx.

By default, a broadcast will expire after 12 hours. This supports long meetings and presenters who create a broadcast and send invitations several hours before they start a meeting. However, a long broadcast duration can cause continued server load if a presenter neglects to end the broadcast after the meeting and attendees keep their browser open after the meeting. The maximum duration of a broadcast can be specified (in seconds) by using Windows PowerShell.

To change the maximum duration of a broadcast by using Windows PowerShell

An additional setting can be enabled to force PowerPoint to end a broadcast after a specified length of time being idle. By default, this setting is 0 indicating that there is no idle limit. Care should be taken when you change this setting as valid broadcasts may be idle if the presenter creates the broadcast several hours before a meeting or if there are breaks during a meeting. The broadcast idle time-out (in seconds) can be specified by using Windows PowerShell.